Yogyakarta – The lectures moving to the third day, Saturday (3 / 12) was enlivened with lectures given by the Ministry of Forestry of Indonesia and representatives from APUNA (Nasyiatul Aisyiah Employers' Association). The Lectures held at 09.30 to 11.00 emphasized the importance of women as agents of change, with economic empowerment, women can be independent in the era of globalization.

"Today, many women in our country are only to be employed as migrant workers (female workers) in a foreign country, if we can not create jobs in the country, we can only export the hard field forces there, and finally our mentality is likely mental of maid," said Ir. Tahrir Fathoni, M. Sc from the Ministry of Forestry.

According to Fathoni, women is potentially to perform a variety of productive activities to support the family economy, for example in the development of small and medium enterprises (UKM) or cooperative. There, women can serve as a business, managers, supervisors or as workers. With these roles, women could contribute actively in the process of economic recovery.

The poverty that issued women is due to the structural poverty. It is a condition in which a group of people were in the bay area of ​​poverty and has no opportunity for them to get out of it, they are trapped in a cycle of poverty because they are not able to access social, economic and political sources. 

"There is a program from the ministry of forestry in effort to cut down the structural poverty, such as forest land management rights, besides, women's empowerment in the forestry sector can be a system for the cultivation of plants, processing of non-timber products such as silkworms, mushrooms, charcoal, and energy development and others, "said Fathoni.

In the same occasion, representatives from APUNA, Nindya who is also a mother and the caretaker of BMT BUANA (Amil Business Entity of Nasyiatul Aisyiah) in Sukoharjo shares tips and success stories in management of the BMT. Originally Buana is a cooperation business that now converts into the Islamic financial services. Not only the services, but the system is now also sharia. The existence of BMT Buana is also in response to the grievances that people were formerly much trapped by the "Bank Plecit" where they are loaned amount of capital, but ultimately due to the high interest rates they can not return it.

BMT Buana which has been established for 11 years, could still exist because they implement a system service excellence. Where the system is stressed by the quality of customer service above the average. With this system, they tried to make customers stay comfortable, and feel resistant to other similar product. The basis of this services comes from the research saying that 68% of customers switch to other products because they were disappointed due to poor service. Lectures followed by about 130 participants were quite interesting, a lot of questions about empowerment and the sharing of problems in the area of ​​the NA leader were expressed in the lecture.

(trans by hm-uhamka)